


If You Ever Had a Real Heart

by mytimehaspassed



Series: And I Got My Heart [2]
Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:26:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t notice it at first. </p>
<p>It takes eight weeks, forty-seven Double Shots, and three sleepless nights working on a new line of code for an upgrade to Nolancorp’s software before his accountant sends him a short and gentle email asking if he was still alive, and, oh yeah, had he been traveling lately, because there were several different deposits into his account from all over the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Ever Had a Real Heart

**IF YOU EVER HAD A REAL HEART**  
REVENGE  
Nolan/Tyler; Daniel/Tyler; (implied) Tyler/OCs; Nolan/OCs  
 **WARNINGS** : AU  
 **NOTES** : This is the sequel to [And I Got My Heart and I'm in a Fire](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/25847.html)

He doesn’t notice it at first. 

It takes eight weeks, forty-seven Double Shots, and three sleepless nights working on a new line of code for an upgrade to Nolancorp’s software before his accountant sends him a short and gentle email asking if he was still alive, and, oh yeah, had he been traveling lately, because there were several different deposits into his account from all over the world. 

The increments are small and don’t match up to any of the work Nolan’s done lately, and he rolls his eyes and chalks it up to bank error, not even bothering to hack into their system to give the money back. 

***

It keeps happening, though.

***

He counts twelve hundred in Amsterdam and sixteen-fifty in London and eight hundred in San Francisco. He counts three thousand in Brisbane. He counts five hundred in Paris. 

The numbers looks small and neat on his laptop. He picks up the phone.

***

His accountant tells him not to worry, that it’s probably just some sort of fluke that will be worked out in a matter of days. His lawyer tells him that without a legitimate claim, it will look as if he’s getting his money laundered or something as equally nefarious. The girl he picks up outside of The Stowaway with the rose tattoo on her hip tells him, her mouth somewhere between his belly button and his thighs, that he should take the money and run because nobody ever gave her a handout like that before. 

Nolan smiles and shakes his head and wants to say something like, why, you want one, but she does something with her tongue that makes him shudder, so he sucks in air sharply between his teeth and shuts up.

***

His therapist tells him that he should give the money back. 

Nolan rolls his eyes and picks at the pillow sitting on his lap, breathing out in one, long breath. He wears his sunglasses inside and refuses to take them off and he wonders if she thinks he’s hiding blood-shot eyes or bruises or both. “Oh, yeah?” he says. 

“Yes,” she says. 

He breathes out again. “And why should I give the money back?”

She looks at him for a moment before she makes her hand into a fist and brings it slowly to a point under her chin. Her wrist is covered in gold, her glasses are Versace. “Why do you think you should give it back?” she says. 

He wonders how much he pays her. 

***

Daniel Grayson picks up the phone on the fourth ring and asks him in a whisper what the fuck he thinks he’s doing calling him in the middle of the night like this is some sort of booty call. 

Nolan laughs and wants to say as if, but takes a deep swallow from the bottle of whiskey in his hand and says, “What was it like?” And his voice is deep and sad and it hurts when the words come out so he takes another swallow. And another, and another. 

Nolan hears Daniel sigh and then he hears the shuffle of bed sheets like he’s sitting up, and Nolan wonders what Daniel looks like underneath all those clothes, his hair pushed around and his face all wrinkled from sleep. “What was what like?” 

Nolan laughs again, and it sounds bitter and nothing like him. “What was it like to have him love you?”

Nolan hears Daniel swallow and he hears the rustling of the sheets again and he hears the flip of a light switch and Daniel breathes into the phone and Nolan hears that, too. “It was,” Daniel says, and then stops, and Nolan realizes that everything inside of him has gone still and everything outside of him has gone quiet. 

“What?” Nolan whispers. 

“It was,” Daniel says, and then he sighs again. “It was probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling real.”

Nolan nods even though Daniel can’t see him, the bottle warm in his hand, and Daniel says Nolan’s name once and then twice and Nolan pretends that he doesn’t want to cry and tells him thanks, his voice coming out unsteady and raw. 

“Go to sleep, Nolan,” Daniels says, and Nolan hangs up the phone and shuts his eyes. 

***

He doesn’t tell his therapist about the late night call to Daniel Grayson, but it’s probably not because of the bullshit about him being closeted or the recorded session tapes she doesn’t think Nolan knows about, or the way Nolan hasn’t told her anything about Tyler because before he was in a dysfunctional relationship with a man who decided to steal sixty thousand dollars, he was in a string of relationships with men and women who decided to steal as much money as they could through sex or lawsuits or good old fashioned blackmail. She knows the story a little too well, if the notes on her hard drive are anything to go by. 

He tells her about the drinking, though, and the pot he smoked on his way to her office, and the pot he’s going to smoke on the way back, and she furrows her brow in a way that’s just this side of non-judgmental, and she says, “Do you think that’s too much?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “You’re the expert. Do you think that’s too much?”

She flattens her mouth and shakes her head and tells him that she’s much more interested in his answer than her own. “Nolan, I’m here to help you,” she says. 

He stops himself from rolling his eyes only because she would write it down in that stupid little notebook of hers and then Nolan might do something utterly outrageous like tear out all the pages and set them on fire. She looks at him inquisitively, and something must be showing on his face, so he relaxes his features and then smiles, wide. “I know,” he says. 

“Thank you,” he says. 

“I don’t know what I would do without these sessions,” he says. 

She smiles and her face is round and kind when she looks at him. He makes a mental note to hack into her computer files and erase all her tapes. 

***

He counts three hundred in Madrid. 

He counts eleven thousand in Buenos Aires. 

***

He finds a few of the deposit locations in six countries, but can only hack into three. The codes from the banks bring up grainy, low-res, black and white photographs of three different men that Nolan has never seen before. They all wear dark sunglasses and expensive suits. Nolan doesn’t even know how to start connecting faces with names and bank accounts, so he circulates the pictures to a guy he met online a thousand years and a few million dollars ago, hoping for something more than what he has. 

He prints the pictures out and pins them to the board above his computer. He opens another bottle of whiskey. 

***

“I’ve got a hit,” Michael says, and Nolan can hear some tapping on the keyboard in the background. 

“Yeah?” Nolan says, as he presses his phone to his ear and motions that he’ll be a minute. The half-naked man on his bed sighs and stops unzipping his pants, and Nolan walks into the hallway and shuts the door behind him. He has already forgotten the man’s name. 

“Yeah,” Michael says, and Nolan can hear a sound like the chiming of a clock and he tries to mentally calculate the time zone difference between the Hamptons and Seattle, but he’s had one too many cocktails and his head swims at the thought. “The guy in your Berlin picture has had a few arrests in his lifetime.”

“What for?” Nolan asks. He hears his stereo start up in the bedroom and he presses the phone tighter to his ear. 

“Prostitution, mostly. He got caught in New York a while back, with an heir to some kind of crude oil fortune. It made the papers.” Michael lists off the names and Nolan thinks he might recognize them. 

“What was he doing in Berlin?” Nolan asks, and he hears Michael whistle over the phone line. 

“Apparently the same thing he was doing in New York,” he says. “There’s a nice video I can send you of him and another guy that involves handcuffs and baby oil. You can add it to your spank bank, if you want.” 

Nolan laughs and he hears his stereo turn up even louder. “I’ll take the video, but not for the reasons you’re thinking of,” he says. 

“Sure,” Michael says. “What’s all this for, anyway?”

Before, it might have been shocking to Nolan how easy it is to lie and say it’s for a background check on the CEO of a nameless corporation who wants to buy in to Nolan’s good name, but with everything he does now, it’s the most obvious choice. 

***

(Later, much later, Tyler will call him a liar. 

Nolan will let him.)

***

He counts two hundred in Zurich. 

***

The man from Berlin catches a flight under the name of Bastian, one of the five I.D.s he carries with him, and the plane lands in LaGuardia around dinner time. Nolan is there to meet him, and he’s surprised to find that he actually looks handsome in person, thick hair and stubble that licks at the bottom of his lip and curves halfway around his face, his hands gripping his bag tight enough to break. 

“Mr. Ross,” he says, his mouth forming a perfect imitation of a real smile, and it’s more like a statement than a question, but Nolan nods anyway. 

He tells Big Ed to grab his luggage, and then leads Bastian to the car that sits outside waiting for them. He opens up a bottle of something cold and offers it to Bastian before he takes a swig. 

“I don’t drink while I work,” Bastian says, and places his palm warm on Nolan’s thigh. His accent is unrecognizable, but definitely there, and Nolan almost chokes on the bottle when Bastian’s hand slides higher. “And I certainly don’t drink before I get paid. I’m sure a businessman like yourself can appreciate that.” 

Nolan laughs, and it’s nervous, but it’s not because he finds this funny, and he unwraps Bastian’s hand from around his leg and holds it for a minute in the air between them. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve given you the wrong impression.” 

Bastian looks confused, his eyebrow arching higher on his forehead, and then he just looks resigned, bringing his hand back to his own lap, sliding just out of reach. He says something in a language that Nolan doesn’t know, and pulls out a cell phone from his pocket. “I promised I wouldn’t betray him by telling you his name,” he says, and Nolan thinks that maybe Bastian is a lot smarter than his tricks give him credit for, maybe even than Nolan gave him credit for, and he watches Bastian flip through his contact list before he comes across a phone number without a name attached to it. “This is all I can give you.” 

Nolan takes the cell phone from him and turns it around. 

Bastian says, “He thought maybe you would be angry if you knew, that’s why he wanted it to be kept secret.” 

Nolan reads the numbers on the screen, reads them just as he’s read them maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand times before. 

Bastian says, “He thought maybe you wouldn’t notice it. Or, if you did, you wouldn’t care.” 

Nolan feels the bile in his throat start to rise, and he has to tell Big Ed to pull the car over, his hand on the door handle cold and numb. 

Bastian says, his voice loud over the roar of the cars on the highway, his voice loud over the rumble of planes gaining altitude, his voice loud over Nolan heaving onto the road, he says, “He never thought you would come this far. He never thought you would figure it out.” 

Nolan laughs, wiping the edges of his mouth with his palms, and says, “Tyler always was an asshole.” 

***

He counts sixteen thousand in Quebec.

***

The phone rings six times before Tyler picks up. 

He only says hello, but his voice is soft and unsteady and Nolan knows that Tyler knows it’s him. 

Nolan had written down fourteen opening lines for this moment on the back of a takeout menu, circling and underlining and scratching out, writing in big, bold letters that scream across the page, but somehow he forgets everything he memorized, forgets how to even form words with his tongue and with his teeth. He closes his eyes and Tyler breathes out over the line and Nolan remembers what that breath felt like drifting across his skin and he feels like he’s going to be sick again. He bites down hard enough on his bottom lip that it starts to bleed. 

“Nolan?” Tyler says, and his voice is everything Nolan remembered. 

“Please,” Nolan starts, and there’s blood in his mouth and he wants to swallow but he’s forgotten how. “Please,” he says again, and Tyler makes a choked noise on the other end. 

“I’m sorry,” Tyler says, and Nolan coughs and pretends that he doesn’t hear Tyler start to cry. 

“Please stop giving the money back,” Nolan says, and hangs up before Tyler can reply. 

***

Nolan checks his bank account every day. 

The numbers stay the same. 

***

It’s beyond laughable how easy it is to hack into the GPS on Tyler’s phone. Tyler sits in a coffee shop in Brooklyn for three and a half hours and Nolan watches him through the security video feed of the dry cleaners across the street, and Tyler looks black and white and shaky, and he drinks something in a white paper cup and waits until a man approaches him, sliding into the seat next to his and slipping a hand on the back of Tyler’s neck. Nolan doesn’t miss when the man slips a hundred dollar bill into the fold of Tyler’s palm, doesn’t miss when the man brushes his thumb along the curve of Tyler’s cheekbone, doesn’t miss when Tyler excuses himself to go to the bathroom and the man follows. 

And Nolan definitely doesn’t miss when Tyler leans back to open the door and the man catches up and presses himself along Tyler’s back, kissing the space just below his ear. The same space Nolan used to kiss. 

Nolan makes up the rest. 

***

Tyler picks up on the first ring and Nolan wants to scream and yell and ask him how he could do this, but Tyler doesn’t say a word and Nolan feels tired and ashamed. 

“Why?” He says, and it’s for the money, and it’s for everything. 

“Because I could,” Tyler says, and there’s the sound like a pull on a cigarette over the line and Nolan didn’t know Tyler smoked, but then again Nolan didn’t know a lot of things. “Because you had money and I wanted it. Is that what you want to hear, Nolan?”

Nolan presses the heel of his palm to his eye, trying to stem the start of a headache there. “Yes,” he lies. “Yes, that’s what I want to hear.”

“I used you because you were stupid enough to let me. You were so easy, you know that, Nolan?” Tyler says. His voice is hoarse and Nolan can just imagine how it got that way. “You were so fucking easy. I should have gotten more than sixty thousand. I should have gone back for more.”

Nolan breathes in and it’s hard, and he can’t seem to get past the pressure on his chest, and he fumbles for the bottle on his desk and it doesn’t go down smooth. “Tell me more,” he says. He swallows and swallows and the bottle gleams in the lamplight. 

Tyler makes a noise over on the other end, and it sounds like he’s protesting for a minute, like he doesn’t want to give Nolan what he wants, like he might not be able to give Nolan what he wants, but then he clears his throat, and Nolan hears the flick of a lighter, the catch of the flint. “I deserved a lot more for letting you fuck me,” he finally says, and his voice is vacant and bare and it’s nothing like Nolan remembers, nothing like what Tyler pretended to be. “You think I liked the way you touched me?”

“No,” Nolan says. He can hear the bitter laugh on the other end and he feels his chest tighten. 

“You think I liked how you used to hold me? How you used to kiss me?” Tyler blows into the receiver, and Nolan imagines the smoke rising up and up and up.

“No,” Nolan says, and it hurts and it might be more than he can bear. 

“I hated you,” Tyler says, and it sounds like it’s coming from between his teeth, and it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere Tyler never let Nolan see. “I hated every fucking inch of you.”

“I hated you, too,” Nolan says, and he smiles even though no one can see him. 

***

(Later, much later, Tyler will press his face to the underside of Nolan’s chin and tell him that they were both born to be liars. 

And Nolan won’t disagree.)

***

Nolan watches Tyler walk into hotel rooms and gas stations and office buildings and he waits. He doesn’t see and he doesn’t hear and he drinks to not think about it, but when he watches Tyler leave a little more rumpled and a little less happy, he knows where that money in his bank came from and he can’t stop himself from seeing it behind his eyelids, the way the men would touch Tyler and the way Tyler would touch back. 

He leaves long, rambling, obscene messages on Tyler’s voice mail and he watches Tyler listen to them, and he watches Tyler’s face go still and pained, and he watches Tyler call somebody and set up another meeting, his mouth forming words that Nolan can’t read. 

Tyler never calls him back. 

And maybe that’s not what Nolan wants. 

***

His therapist asks him why he never takes his sunglasses off and he lies and says that he gets migraines. He shifts on her six thousand dollar cream-colored couch and watches her watch him and she doesn’t say anything and he wonders what she looks like underneath her pencil skirt and Burberry blouse, and she raises her eyebrows, and he imagines that she’s pale and freckled and genuinely shy, and that he could make her laugh hard enough to snort in a completely undignified way, and that her hair would shimmer in the sunlight of his bedroom where she would lay between his sheets. 

“What do you do in your free time?” Nolan asks, pushing up the sleeves of his jacket, laying his palms out flat on his thighs. 

She sighs and closes her notebook and tells him that this therapy is for him, and here she says his name in a stern, matronly way, and that if he doesn’t want to talk, they could end today’s session and meet again next week, where she hopes he has more answers to give her or more issues that he thinks needs solving. She touches her glasses with her right hand and asks him if he would like to continue or not, and he tells her no. 

On the drive home, he tells Big Ed to pull over in the corner of a McDonald’s parking lot, where he closes the partition and unzips his pants and tries to think of her mouth on his dick, her hands small and warm on his stomach, her tongue tracing the outer shell of his ear, but when he closes his eyes, all he can see is Tyler. 

***

Tyler picks up on the third ring. 

“How much more did you have left?” Nolan asks, and he’s breathless. 

“What?” Tyler says. He picked up at three forty-seven in the morning, but he doesn’t sound like he woke up from sleep, and Nolan doesn’t want to think about it. 

“How much more did you have left to steal from me before you were done? How much more were you supposed to get?” Nolan says. 

Tyler starts and then stops, probably running through the lies in his head, running through all the things that he had told Nolan that might contradict what he’s about to say, but Nolan makes a noise like he’s impatient or he just wants honesty or he doesn’t want Tyler to take too long because he’s smart enough to say something that Nolan will believe. Tyler sighs and tells him, “Nine thousand, three hundred, and sixty-two dollars and seventy-eight cents.” 

“Can you take a check?” Nolan says, and makes a move for his checkbook, pen poised over the paper. 

“Fuck, Nolan,” Tyler says, and his voice is choked and Nolan can hear the anger underneath his words. “I can’t fucking take this anymore.” 

Nolan makes a sound like he’s about to say something, but Tyler doesn’t let him. 

“I don’t want your fucking money, if that hasn’t already been made abundantly clear. If you hate me as much as you say you do, then leave me the fuck alone, because I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep picking up the phone and hoping you’re going to ask me to come back because even though it’s worthless that I’m so fucking sorry, you still love me anyway.” Tyler stops and Nolan can hear him pull in a shaky, sad breath, and Nolan forgets how he’s supposed to feel. 

“I can’t keep waking up every day and pretend that you’re not watching me. I can’t keep waiting for you to call me. I’m sorry I fucked up your life,” Tyler says. “Believe me, I am so, so fucking sorry, but I just can’t keep going like this.” 

“Then tell me why,” Nolan says. “Tell me the real reason.” 

Tyler starts to cry, and Nolan says his name, softly, and Tyler stops. “I’m a whore, Nolan. I owed some very important people a lot of money. It’s not exactly original.”

“And you couldn’t get the money from Daniel Grayson,” Nolan says, and he knows that Tyler’s not even surprised that Nolan knows. 

“I couldn’t get it from Daniel, so I turned to you,” Tyler says. 

“Were you in love with him?” Nolan asks. His voice is low in the darkened room, and he sits on his bed and pulls the sheets around himself, and Tyler’s voice is soft on the other end, quiet. 

“For a little while,” Tyler says. “He reminded me of someone I knew a long time ago. It was easy to fall in love with him.” 

“How about me?” Nolan says, and he buries his face into his pillow, the phone pressed to his ear, tight. “How easy was it to fall in love with me?” 

Tyler doesn’t laugh, and Nolan thinks that maybe this is more serious to Tyler than it has ever been to Nolan. “It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” Tyler says. 

Nolan can feel the tears start to well around his eyes, and he feels like he should be angry or violent or something as equally destructive, but nothing about this feels wrong, nothing about him or Tyler feels like he should stop. “Please,” Nolan says, and his voice is thick and emotional, and Nolan doesn’t want to be able to move on, doesn’t want to be able to let go, because Tyler was nothing like what Nolan wanted and everything like what Nolan needed. “Please come home.” 

And Tyler says okay. 

***

(Later, much later, Tyler will press his mouth to Nolan’s mouth and tell him that he never meant for any of this to happen like it did. And Nolan will smile and say okay and they will push against each other and Nolan will swallow Tyler’s tongue and Tyler will slide his fingers down the length of Nolan’s torso, and they won’t say anything about what happened when Tyler was gone, and they won’t talk about money, and they won’t talk about love. 

Later, much later, Tyler will hold his mouth just above Nolan’s mouth and tell him thank you.

And Nolan will tell him to shut up and kiss him already.)


End file.
